Google and Google Adwords are complex and continue to change rapidly. For B2B businesses, Adwords can be very challenging, but it can also be the catalyst to success in your overall campaign. 

You’ve used Google before, right? Given that Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day, it’s probably safe to assume you have. You {likely} use Google to search for things like clothes, housewares, and more… As a consumer. But what about as a business professional? Do you ever search for work-related things? Search for an answer to a problem? I imagine if you’re using it for that purpose, your customers are as well, which is why it’s important that you consider it in your strategy. 

In this post, we’ll cover how Google Adwords can play a role in your B2B strategy, including:

• What role Google Adwords plays in B2B specifically
• How B2B and B2C Adword strategies differ
• How to successfully target your B2B buyer with Google Adwords
• Goal and budget setting for your PPC campaign

Google Adwords and Your B2B Strategy

To better understand the B2B Adwords strategy, one must first understand the role it plays in the overall B2B marketing strategy. Just like any other tool in your toolbox, Google Adwords plays its own critical role. Put simply, its main role is to find the right people who are directly or indirectly searching for your products or services and provide them with the answers they’re seeking. 

Your target personas have many questions and pain points and will almost always turn to Google for those answers. To put this into perspective, Pardot surveyed over 400 B2B buyers and found that 78% of B2B buyers turn to Google search after consulting with a colleague. Google Adwords allows your business to be there as soon as your personas hit that search bar. What’s more, if you’re not using Google Adwords, your competitors likely are. They will be there to answer those questions even if you aren’t. 

B2B vs. B2C Adwords Strategy

So, how do you adjust your strategy to tailor it to B2B buyers? B2B and B2C marketing in general differ mainly in their target audiences and the strategies used to reach them. Adwords is no different. This means there will be significant differences in your overall account structure, how you target your personas, what types of keywords you use, how you write ad copy and how you remarket. It all starts with knowing your B2B buyer persona. 

The B2B Buyer Persona

Your persona and how you target your persona can arguably be the most important part of your campaign. The B2B and B2C persona actually have a lot in common. They both have a goal, a problem to solve, change drivers, and a sales cycle associated with them. That said, the B2B buyer is much more complex. Unlike the B2C buyer, their main goal isn’t focused on personal things like entertainment and other luxuries. Their goals are focused more on ROI, increased efficiencies, solving a problem, and their organization’s needs as a whole. An important question to ask yourself is not only what your persona is looking for, but what their organization is looking for. Once you answer those questions, you’ll be better able to target that persona more effectively. 

Targeting the B2B Persona

Just like any other campaign, ask yourself what the key demographics of your persona are:

• Where are they hanging out digitally?
• What age group are they in?
• What is their job title and role?
• Do they have the power within their organization to make decisions?
• Do they have to consult with many others before taking action?

All of these questions are a great place to start and can help you narrow down your audience. A great way to target these factors of your audience is by utilizing audience lists imported from analytics, custom intent audiences, and custom affinity audiences. 

These features in Adwords help you target users based on things like what they’re interested in, what sites they frequently visit, what they search for most often, and what “market” they’re in. Learn more about these strategies here. 

Keep in mind not to get too narrow with your targeting. Each time you apply an audience, interest, or category, you are decreasing your reach. Try to test a few aspects at a time and different combinations of them. For example, you might have one campaign that targets people in the market for sports and nutrition items, and another campaign that targets people who frequently visit websites about sports teams and healthy recipes. Test combinations of audiences and tailor your ad copy to be helpful and relevant.

Selecting the Right Keywords

As mentioned above, search intent is essential to a B2B Adwords strategy. You won’t always know what keywords are most likely to convert right off the bat. B2B buyers often ask much more complex questions when they search on Google than B2C buyers. They typically use long-tail keywords and phrases when they search instead of directly searching for a specific product or solution. 

When setting your campaign keywords, don’t get too granular. Start by casting a wide net using:

• Broad match
• Broad match modified
• Phrase match keywords

This allows your campaign to pull in search term data. Next, give your campaign a good amount of time so you can gain insight into how your customers are searching and what they’re looking for. As the data comes in, analyze the search terms report to find potential keywords to add to your campaign and to add as negative keywords. 

Over time, you’ll start to notice trends in the search terms report that point toward a specific customer action. Keep your eye out for search terms that may express an opportunity for a new keyword group.

Pro Tip: Put the higher-performing keywords in their own ad group so you can treat them individually. You may add bid adjustments, ad copy changes, or add highly relevant extensions.

Carefully Approach Your Ad Copy

The biggest thing to keep in mind when writing Google Adwords copy for a B2B buyer is that you aren’t going to be the only company on their radar. You need to make sure the ad copy is relevant and will get their attention. This applies to almost every Google Ads strategy but much more in a B2B Adwords strategy because the B2B buyer tends to do a lot more comparison shopping and research than a B2C buyer. 

So, when you think about creating your ad copy, ask yourself how you would stand out to the user. Look at your ad and put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. Ask yourself: 

• What would make you click on it? 
• What elements or phrasing tend to catch your eye? 
• What would make it more appealing than the others? 

Try to highlight your organization’s strengths and showcase the value you add as much as possible. Most people aren’t looking for a list of features, they’re looking for a solution to a problem. Focus on how you can solve that problem and what you can do for them. 

Pro Tip: Once you have ad copy you like that’s tailored to your buyer, give it time to see how it performs. With a little data under your belt, we suggest doing A/B testing to see which ads perform better than others. Adjust accordingly. 

Setting Your Goals and Budget for Google Adwords

Last, but certainly not least, when building your campaign, ask yourself “what is my main goal?” and “what is my budget?” Your campaign goal and budget will help you dictate what the overall account structure will look like and how you approach its various components. Start by defining success and what KPIs are most important. 

Goals

A goal or measure of success could look like a lead: 

• Contacting you via phone
• Filling out a form
• Downloading a resource
• Spending a certain amount of time on a page
• Registering for an event or blog subscription

If the main objective or goal is to have leads contact you via phone, followed closely by filling out a form, then you may consider having a campaign for each of those things. Segment out your campaigns by these goals. This way you can tailor certain settings and targeting to each. 

Pro Tip: No matter what your goals are, make sure they’re SMART. Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Timely.

Budget

You should have a sense of what your budget is as you’re creating campaigns and have hard and fast numbers ready for launch. It’s ideal to have different campaigns with different campaign types, strategies, and then run tests within those campaigns. However, your campaign and what you’re able to do is restricted by your overall budget. 

It wouldn’t make sense to bid on top of funnel keywords with a small budget. So, if your budget is small, focus on what will be most profitable for you, and dedicate a few keywords at a time for things like testing and data mining. 

This is just the tip of the Google Adwords iceberg and the role it can play in your B2B strategy. But once you understand the role it plays, how to target your persona, identify keywords, and set up a campaign for success, the next thing to do is to try it out for yourself. 

Still not convinced or looking for some guidance on how to successfully set up, launch and manage your Google Adwords strategy for B2B? One of our strategists can help. Let’s chat Adwords!